


untitled

by hfszn



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Lowercase, Not Beta Read, POV Second Person, but its alexs pov i promise bro, i miss alex a lot honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26414431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hfszn/pseuds/hfszn
Summary: you ask him what his least favorite word is and he saysmoistwith all of the grimace an eight year old can make and you laugh, soft and gentle in a way that life has not been. you tell him that you don’t have a least favorite word because you don’t, because you can't, because it doesn’t exist yet.
Relationships: Alex Blake/James Blake
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	untitled

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [etymology](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811953) by [minuanos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minuanos/pseuds/minuanos). 



> hi technically inspired by minuanos 'etymology' (which is a lovely read if you've never read it) but not entirely so, mostly just a character study on alex.

you are six years old with fingertips stained blue from ballpoint pens and your mother’s lap is still your favorite place to sit. 

you are doing crossword puzzles at the kitchen table, your father away at work, your brothers roughhousing on the living room floor, and you think you might be in love with words. there is a permanence in the ink you press onto the page, letters big and unsure as you fly through the crossword puzzle, and she laughs, your mother, and tells you to slow down, to take your time.

_ alex,  _ she says, warm and honey-sweet in a way that you love,  _ the words aren’t going anywhere. they’re not going to leave you behind _ . 

language is nothing but a collection of words and rules but words are a language in and of themself and you think that is beautiful. you still can’t quite solve the crossword puzzles by yourself, still need your mother to help you with the big words and the obscure phrases, but you think that this is what you want to do when you get bigger. there is a beauty in words, a beauty you want to discover more of. 

you are only six years old, with ink stained hands and a mind that races a mile a minute, but you tell her you’re going to be the first person to know every single word there is and she smiles before she reads out the next clue.

\--

you are sixteen years old when he laughs and your stomach flips (14 across, gymnast’s feat) in a way that you don’t have the words to describe. 

the library has always been a safe space for you. the cafeteria is filled with people you don’t yet understand, with loud and bright and messy and everything you don’t like. here, in the safe haven of the library, no matter how small it may be at your public kansas city high school, lunchtime can be spent surrounded by books and words and things that have always made sense.

you know that there is no comfort (7 down, ease pain or distress) in unfamiliarity. 

but there is a boy, no older than you, in the 600’s section of the library that you lock eyes with every time you look up between the shelves. there is a flush that rises to your cheeks and you try to hide behind the stack of books piled a mile high in your arms but you think you see him smile and it makes you smile.

this isn’t the first time you’ve seen him, not by far, and you don’t think it will be the last (27 down, "___ christmas, i gave you my heart") but it is the first time that you find yourself searching for him first. you don’t know what to think of that.

you know what your mother would say, what your brothers would threaten to do if you told them about him, and you think it must be the most ridiculous act of teenage rebellion that you keep him a secret. you think, maybe, that it’s less you not wanting to tell them and more you not wanting to make it real yet. there is a permanence somewhere there that you are not quite ready for.

when you find him, he is at a table with sunlight streaming across his hair. you think there are butterflies in your stomach. he waves when he sees you, corners of his mouth quirking up into a lopsided smile that you think you like a little too much. you ask if the seat across from him is taken. he says no. he has nine (45 across, target ball in a game of pool) medical books spread out on the table and, as you look over the words that don’t quite yet make sense to you, he tells you that he wants to be a doctor before he even tells you his name.  _ james blake _ , he tells you, with all of the confidence of a teenage boy who does not yet know himself.

(you think alex blake has a nice ring to it.)

there are train track metal wires over his teeth that render (19 down, provide plaster) your name a new sound and he flushes, embarrassment coloring the tips of his ears red, but it makes you laugh because you like the way your name sounds in his mouth anyway.

you are only sixteen years old and you think there ought to be a word for this, this  _ feeling  _ that he gives you, but you think, as you hold his hand under the library table, that for once you’re okay with not knowing.

\--

you are thirty-six years old with dirt under your fingernails and you know, now, that you will never be content with not knowing.

there are two hundred eighteen thousand six hundred thirty-two words in the english language. you know this because you study linguistics. you study the words you have always loved and their meanings because words have always made things make sense. you don’t know how to make sense of this. 

medical jargon was never your thing, no matter how many times james tried to explain it to you. there is a sea of all of the best doctors you could find coming in and out, there are tests and more tests and even more tests because all of the tests say something different and all of the different is  _ bad _ and all you know is that your son is  _ sick  _ and no one knows  _ why _ . the words swim around your head and you feel trapped underwater as he gets bigger, just as long as you when you lay with him, and yet somehow sicker and none of this is  _ fair. _

you don’t know how to find love in a language that feels devoid of it. 

there are days you wake up, before your mind catches up to the present and the understanding of what has happened, and you think that he is still here. you wake and you wonder which book he would like to be read today, if he’ll be feeling up to another crossword puzzle, if he’ll be feeling better. you wonder if today will be the day they will finally understand what’s going wrong, if today will be the first day they can stop asking whats wrong and start working on making it better.

you hate those days. 

you take up an offer to teach at georgetown, james takes up an overseas position with médecins sans frontières, you both say that this is not the end. you make a promise to talk at least once a week. you do not talk about ethan. you do not know if you can. 

your mother comes to visit, once, and places the days newspaper on the kitchen table. the daily crossword stares up at you and you can’t remember the last time you finished one. she hands you a pen but you do not write. you want to tell her about ethan, how she would have loved him and him, her, but you do not. you say nothing because you fear that there are no words left that will not remind you of him. there is a lock in your throat and you fear that you have buried the key the same day you buried what you found to be the meaning behind life. 

he is gone and you will never know what it was called.

you are only thirty-six and it gets easier, some days, to think of him but mostly it feels like you’re suffocating in a sea of nothingness and you don’t know if you’ll ever find your way out. 

\--

you are sixty years old and there is another boy dying in your arms and you do not know if you can do this again. 

there’s so much blood and there’s so much loud and bright and he’s closing his eyes-- _ keep your eyes on me, stay awake for me _ \--and you can’t tell if your heart is racing or dropping because you can’t lose him again. you’ve buried him once before, you don’t know if you can stomach doing it again. you tell yourself that he’s going to be okay, because he has to be okay, because you won’t be okay if he’s not okay, and you sit with him in the hospital because his mother can’t and you have to make sure he wakes up. he has to wake up. he has to.

you call him ethan. he remembers. you wonder at which point he became a surrogate. you wonder at which point he realized. 

in another life, you’d like to think ethan would be a lot like him. they’d be around the same age, the same height maybe. they’d have the same eyes, the same messy hair that curls around the ears, the same smile. you think they’d have the same kindness that comes from overcoming what seems like the impossible. you know that this is the impossible. you leave him your credentials, your gun, and you leave him because you have to. 

you are only sixty years old but you think, with a sad smile that reaches your sad eyes, that you won’t ever be okay and that, in and of itself, is okay. 

**Author's Note:**

> hi some liberties i took:  
> -uhh alex's age is never properly stated and i think she might actually be older bc she was recruited by the fbi at 24 and she worked on the Unabomber case (1978) but i just set her birthyear as 1954 bc I'm tired of math rn  
> -we don't know how alex and james met but they deserve rights so i gave them high school sweetheart rights  
> -i did actual crosswords to do this (which i realize now is kinda stupid but hindsight is 20/20 and all that) and as a stem major i don't rec doing crossword puzzles
> 
> anyways yeah thank you for reading, please feel free to let me know how you feel about it (and also feel free to hmu on tumblr [@criminalszn](https://criminalszn.tumblr.com))


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